As with many things with the guitar-playing, cigarette-smoking, former GOP presidential candidate, he didn’t make it simple.

First, some context: After a snafu wherein the Michigan Republican failed to make the ballot for his House race, the state’s attorney general started looking into allegations of election fraud.
McCotter said he’d pass on trying to make the race, saying he wanted to help out with the probe.

Then last week, McCotter’s plans for a television show, “Bumper Sticker: Made on Motown,” leaked. The Detroit News reported that the idea involved McCotter hosting a variety show with plenty of blue language and even a “Black Santa.”

On Friday, the Michigander scrawled a statement of Shakespearean resignation across his Facebook wall.

“After nearly 26 years in elected office,” he wrote, “[this] past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family.”

That day he updated his Facebook status to say that he “[left] job at Michigan’s 11th District” in 2012.

On Saturday, he updated his status to read “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem,” which means “from shadows and images and into the truth.” He included a link to a YouTube clip of a demo of “All Things Must Pass.”

First thing Monday morning, his Washington and Michigan office staffs answered the phones by chirpily informing the caller that they had reached Michigan’s 11th Congressional district. But according to House rules, a Member’s resignation doesn’t take place until the governor and House leaders get the resignation letter.

And when did that happen? On Monday at 4 p.m. — or about three days after McCotter handed in the Congressional version of a note from Juan Epstein’s mother.